The Department of Pathology has continued to expand its presence and impact
in all critical aspects of our mandate*: clinical practice, research, service to
the community, and teaching. The Department of Pathology is uniquely placed as a bridge between the basic
science and clinical medicine disciplines that allow us to be an effective
conduit and facilitator of multidisciplinary and translational research and
cross-disciplinary teaching initiatives. As such, we have successfully launched
Canada’s first fully accredited “Pathologists’ Assistants MSc Professional
Program” with broad support from our faculty, staff and hospital partners in
London and Southwestern Ontario. Our first students graduated in the spring of
2009 into a highly attractive workplace clamoring for this trained professionals
and physician-extenders. We currently have 8 students enrolled in our program.
This initiative adds to a comprehensive graduate program which includes two
other novel programs, an interdisciplinary program in “ecosystem health” with
graduate students performing participatory research with aboriginal communities
in Canada and Africa and faculty members from home departments in the Social
Sciences, Sciences, Engineering and Schulich as well as a part-time graduate
program to facilitate the training of clinician researchers, a vanishing breed
in Canada. In the true spirit of collaborative research, many of our
departmental publications are co-authored by researchers and clinicians from
other departments and health research institutes at Schulich, at Western, in
Canada and abroad. From the point of view of Postgraduate Medical Education, our residency
programs are bucking the national trend and continue to be highly competitive
and oversubscribed. Our consistent 100% success rate over the past 15 years at
the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons Fellowship examinations is a
testament to our ongoing success as educators in the disciplines of Anatomic
Pathology, Neuropathology and Medical Microbiology. From the perspective of undergraduate education, we teach in medicine,
dentistry, bachelor of medical sciences, faculties of sciences and nursing and
laboratory technology programs (St Clair College, Windsor, and Michener
Institute, Toronto). Our faculty members continue to be successful in winning
prestigious Schulich (Faculty), UWO, Provincial and National Teaching Awards.
As clinicians, we are leading Ontario in a number of quality health
initiatives that include the implementation of synoptic reporting in cancer
diagnosis; provincial performance indicators in pathology cancer reporting; and
most recently in the professional interpretation quality monitoring initiatives.
Our pathology faculty’s annual career development and planning process includes
a wide variety of performance indicators that serve as a management tool of
physicians’ practice performance, an innovative first in London and Ontario.
This process is the backbone of the departmental Human Resources Planning
process and workload analysis. As I look forward to our departmental external review in the spring 2010 in
preparation for the recruitment of my successor for 2011, I am pleased by what
we have accomplished in the past few years and how we have positioned ourselves
firmly in the center of translational research and multidisciplinary education.
I believe that this is an exciting time to be in the Department of Pathology
at Schulich. Our passion for education, our dedication to research and our
respect for the patients we serve are at the core of our values. Furthermore, we
believe that we can make it happen, and that we must be an important contributor
to any large Western proposal that contains a critical human disease
component. Bertha Garcia, MD, FRCP(C) * Critical elements of mandate are placed in alphabetical order to emphasize
their equivalent performance, and not to suggest there is a priority amongst
them. To be outstanding we must do all exceptionally well and that is our
goal.Department of Pathology: Message from the Chair/Chief
Professor, Chair/Chief
Department of
Pathology
Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry
The University of
Western Ontario
